


Love Makes Debtors of Us All

by Anam_Writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Pining, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28910190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: For love, he reminded himself. For love he owed his cynicism. For love, he owed his eyes. But it was hard to owe both these things at once when he looked at her....Frederick meditates on the duty he is called to by love in its many forms.Robin just hopes he'll like her a little more, when all is said and done.
Relationships: Frederick/My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Kudos: 16





	Love Makes Debtors of Us All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maddy02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maddy02/gifts).



> Sometimes you just have to embrace the chaos and post about 900 words of a ship your friend likes at 1 am because she teased you very cruelly. 
> 
> Bye!

To his prince, then his king, and forever his liege, he owed much. Frederick owed his nights, spent in the footpaths between tents, scanning for anything that might spill Ylissean blood. He owed clear roads, scouted ahead by those under his command as knight-captain, and cleared of debris - often by his very own hands. He owed the blood he wiped from his steel and the last breaths he took from lungs not his own. He could build a pantheon with the names foes whispered, of gods both near and far; and he would owe that gladly too. 

It was not for a gift, a boon, power, nor service rendered that he owed these things to House Ylisse. He owed them for love: love given, love received. He owed them because he loved his country and had been a boy not much older than Lady Emmeryn was when blood had stained Ylisse’s soil. He owed it because he was a friend to the Exalt, a closer friend to the prince, a guardian to the smallest of them, who still found many occasions to smile. He loved each of them, he loved all of them, he loved what world they could bring about. 

For love, he reminded himself. For love he owed his cynicism. For love, he owed his eyes. But it was hard to owe both these things at once when he looked at her. 

Robin, she called herself, though she did not remember from where the name came or who had given it to her. She simply knew, with conviction, that it was Robin. If she was to be believed, that was all she knew of anything - but for that memory of magic and movement she stored in her body, as incredulous as others when it was summoned by battle’s heat. 

He formed the assumptions demanded of him in the face of Chrom’s near instant favour, of Lissa’s own boundless acceptance. He approached her as a threat until she proved - truly and definitively - that she was otherwise. But that, as Robin so often remarked on herself, was a hard thing to ask of one who had lost their memory. 

_Supposedly_ lost their memory. There was a distinction and every need for him to make it. To be prepared in the face of her betrayal so the scale might be balanced if it came to that. 

He hoped it did not come to that. For - as much as he might wish it otherwise, try with all his might to will it away - he owed her something as well. He owed respect to her intelligence and dedication to mastery. He owed patience when she asked him of the world and its people: how they were, why they were. There was a warmth in his chest at the sight of her smile - not timid but nervous - when she noticed how he watched her. The warmth came too when she tried, so earnestly, to win his trust in ways entirely too immaterial to make a difference. 

"I do know how to mend a tear myself," he told her once, when he'd found her hunched over in the barracks, eyes straining by the light of a single candle.

Robin clutched tightly to his white dress shirt in her lap, as though she feared he might cross the room to snatch it from her. When he did not, she looked back down, smiling a little. 

"I know you don't have time to mend it," she said. "Not with all your duties right now. But I did have the time. So when I saw it in the pile still, I figured I'd help."

"I'd rather you didn't," Frederick kept his voice level. He watched the way her lips tightened into a thin line when he said so, though she did not look up from her work again. "Your stitches are crooked."

Robin laughed. In the glow of her candle and beneath in the pale moon's light through the window she became an ethereal thing. Her white hair, worn long and untied for the night, framed her face with its glow. And her eyes, they danced with a joy seldom seen in the face of his particular brand of humour. 

"Why, Freddy!" She remarked. "I've never known you to stoop to personal attacks."

"I do," he snorted. "If it's honest and my dislike is personal my comments will match."

Robin's smile faltered only the slightest bit. Had he not been used to court he might have attributed it to a trick of the light. 

"I thought maybe you only disliked me professionally." She tried her best to play this off as a joke. It was one of the rare times that her best was not good enough. 

"Well, your stitches have offended me personally," Frederick said. "But you have not. Make of that what you will."

Evidently, she did.

When his shirt was returned - folded, pressed, and mended - it came too with a handkerchief tucked into the garment. It was made from somewhat scratchy cotton, not so delicate as those pieces Frederick already owned. In the corner, where one might embroider initials, was a line in the diagonal, stitched tightly in purple and...crooked. 

Frederick smiled. Then he chuckled. Then he laughed. He thought it safe, where what could be a snake in their midst would never hear him. 

But it was as before. A couple crooked seams changed nothing of his duty as Frederick the Wary. 

He said nothing but a thank you and a request that she refrain from taking on such chores in future when he saw her next. Robin said she understood and he hoped very dearly that she did. 

The feelings which he owed her still festered in the cage of his ribs. Frederick was not a fool, or a swooning maid by any measure. He had suspicions by what power he was moved to owe her thus.


End file.
